


I Am What I Am (A Natural Disaster)

by LayALioness



Series: (belated) Bellarke Week! [4]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 05:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4509930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy and Clarke start dating. He doesn't notice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Am What I Am (A Natural Disaster)

**Author's Note:**

> title from Shark Attack by Grouplove

Bellamy meets Clarke Griffin when he brings his sister lunch at her new job.

At least, that’s what he’s going with when they ask. Mostly, he just wants to make sure her new job isn’t some total crack den, or front for a pot-growing venture, like last time. He still remembers Octavia’s fury when his SWAT team swarmed the tattoo shop she’d been working at for the last two months, answering phones and setting appointments.

Before that, it was the rock climbing gym for six weeks, until the owner won the lottery, closed shop and moved to the Bahamas. Before that, she had a gig at some seedy concert hall, where she got paid in free drinks and tickets for no-name garage bands. At twenty-one, Octavia has a resume six pages long, filled with the most eclectic jobs imaginable. When anyone asks what it is she wants to do, long-term, she says she wants to be a professional Jane-of-all-trades. So far, she’s pretty good at it.

So when she tells Bellamy she was hired by a bakery, he’s understandably suspicious. A bakery seems altogether too _normal_ for his sister, and when he says as much, she just shrugs and says there’s a paint-your-own-pottery barn in the back, like that explains it.

“They just installed an espresso machine,” she says, while somehow managing to destroy him at Halo one-handed, and text someone with the other. “And they need someone to run it. I learned how, from that time I worked at the copy place.”

“The copy place with the counterfeiting ring in the back?” he clarifies. Octavia makes a face.

“ _And_ the fancy espresso machine, for the customers,” she adds, and snipes his avatar in the head.

“Leave the address and your hours on the fridge,” he says sternly, and she leans over the couch to blow a raspberry in his cheek.

She does leave the address though, which is how he finds himself standing in front of _Pies, Paints, and Pottery_ during his lunch break. It’s small, but cute, nestled in a quiet corner off Main Street, so it probably gets a decent amount of business. There’s a chalkboard propped up outside, advertising their new cappuccinos, with a pretty well-done drawing of a tree, though he’s not sure what that has to do with anything. The window has a bunch of artwork on display—paintings done entirely in sepia, and some sort of bird made out of metal and tie-dyed feathers. One of those lucky paper stars dangles by the door, covered in pressed flowers. The whole thing looks like it was vomited up by Pinterest.

“O?” he calls, but his voice is drowned out by the sound of an automated robot voice screeching _Welcome, human!_ from the speaker overhead. He frowns up at it, and hears a second voice—human, this time—grumbling “Dammit, Raven,” from the front counter.

“Bell!” Octavia waves, perched on the counter itself, with a mug of some warm drink in her hands, even though it’s summer in Virginia, and hotter than fried Hell.

He holds up the paper bag of food in greeting, and starts over to her, glancing around as he goes. It’s less of a bakery with a pottery barn, and more like a combination of the two. It looks like the businesses started out separated, but have sense bled into each other and are now completely muddled. There are unpainted plates and cups and piggy banks on all the mismatched tables, and a few half-finished ones too. There’s a ceramic dragon covered in little marijuana leaves, and he eyes it suspiciously. This better not be the tattoo parlor, all over again.

“Guys, this is my brother,” Octavia chirps, and Bellamy finally notices they’re not alone.

Behind the counter stands a very large man that Bellamy thinks could probably take him. He’s a little disappointed about that; the tattooists were mostly skinny pacifists in very tight jeans. The man has a shaved head and a _neck tattoo_ , and flour all over his arms and apron. The apron is a faded pink, and says _My other name is Princess_ , which. Well, he’s a little thrown by that.

“Pleasure to meet you,” the man says. He doesn’t look necessarily _happy_ about Bellamy’s presence, but he doesn’t seem all that put out by it, either. Mostly he looks very serious. He has a faded accent Bellamy can’t place, and shakes his hand firmly. “Would you like to try our cran-apple bread? Freshly baked.” There’s what might be the ghost of a smile on his face, that’s making it very hard to say no.

“Don’t let him bully you into it,” someone says, and Bellamy turns to see a blonde walking out of the back room. There are smudges of wet clay all over her face and hair, and her arms are _covered_ in the stuff. She’s pretty, in that boho artist kind of way, and she’s wearing a black Guinness apron that’s too big for her. “He’s always forcing people to eat his food. He’s _obsessed_ with caloric intake.”

“If I didn’t stop you, you’d live on nothing but Taco Bell,” the man shoots back, and she shrugs, wiping her arms on an already-stained tea towel.

“I _like_ Taco Bell,” she says, and then turns to Bellamy and studies him for a moment. “So you’re the detective?”

“Nah,” Bellamy shrugs; he’s used to the misassumption. “Just a door-kicker,” he grins a little self-deprecatingly, which is pretty much as charming as he gets. It works for him.

Octavia scoffs. “He heads his own SWAT team,” she says, somehow managing to sound less like she’s bragging, and more like she’s annoyed. “He _always_ sells himself short—thinks it makes him look better, or something.”

Bellamy frowns, a little offended. It _works_. “I don’t think that,” he argues.

“Good,” the blonde chirps, holding out a hand, still mostly covered in gray sludge. “I’m Clarke.” He shakes her hand, and Lincoln hands him a towel to wipe off the clay. “That’s Lincoln.”

“Bellamy,” Bellamy says, but Clarke’s already lost interest, turning to root through the lunch he brought for his sister. “Are you always this nosy?” he asks, frowning. Octavia shoots him a look of exasperation, but Clarke just tips her head back and lets out a laugh that’s too big for her body.

“Yes,” she says, cheerfully, digging out four plates and a handful of forks. “Lincoln, we need muffins—and don’t you dare try and sneak those bran ones, I’m onto you.” She dishes each of them a portion of pork and rice. He’s already covered it in a healthy dose of tomato sauce, like he and O like, and Clarke pokes at it suspiciously. “What is it?”

“ _Giniling_ ,” Octavia says around a mouthful. “It’s Filipino.”

Clarke takes a comically small forkful, and chews thoughtfully. Bellamy waits for her to scrunch her nose, or try to politely eat around the spices, like most westerners do, but to his surprise she pretty much inhales the rest. “Well,” she says when she’s finished, “It’s no Taco Bell.”

When Octavia gets home that night—late, because she went out for drinks with her employers—she asks “So what’d you think?” before the door is even closed.

Bellamy pauses the documentary on Owen Glendower and chuckles. “Hi to you, too.”

Octavia frowns. “Hi, big brother, how was your day, what weird biopic are you watching now, what did you think of my coworkers?”

“Aren’t they your bosses?”

“Lincoln said to think of us as coworkers,” she shrugs. “And Clarke doesn’t really care either way.”

Bellamy shrugs back. “He seems okay,” he decides. “She seems…weird.”

“She is,” Octavia agrees, delighted. “She’s a fucking _great_ artist. All the ones in the store are hers, and she does cool stuff with furniture, too. And Lincoln says she doesn’t really talk about it, but she’s pretty famous at all the local galleries.”

“Cool,” Bellamy says, casual. From what he’s seen of Clarke, she’s loud, and she swears like a sailor, but she also whipped out the word _eosinophilic_ in the middle of conversation, so he’s pretty sure she secretly reads the dictionary for fun, or something. She’s cute, and he had to actively keep himself from staring at her breasts all but falling out of her tank top. She apparently also has a thing for Taco Bell.

She’s not really his type, but she’s enticing enough that he probably shouldn’t think too much about it. Lincoln’s definitely _not_ his type, so he’s a lot safer.

Octavia writes the rest of that week’s schedule on a post-it and sticks it to his cheek after he falls asleep on the couch. She lives with him part-time, spending every other night couch surfing through her cycle of friends. She usually texts him the name of whoever she’s going home with, so he doesn’t have to log into Find My Phone to find out. A few weeks in to her job at the bakery, he wakes up to a text that just says _Clarke’s._ He’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop for a while, now, because with Octavia’s jobs, there’s _always_ a second shoe. But so far, everything’s going surprisingly well.

He still shows up with food unannounced, partially to make sure his sister doesn’t just eat cupcakes and banana bread, and partially to check for suspicious-looking plants, and unlicensed Xerox machines.

Lincoln always manages to guilt him into trying his latest culinary experiment, and it’s always too good _not_ to take seconds. And ever since Octavia let it sleep that he drinks his coffee out of cereal bowls—it’s less dishes to wash, and saves room in the cupboards for more important things like shot glasses and his mom’s fancy plates—Clarke’s been forcing him to take a new mug whenever he leaves. Usually, she paints abstract symbols all over them in reds and yellows, which she calls _wake-me-up! colors_.

But then she presses a plain blue one into his hands, that reads _bibi ergo sum_ —a play on _I think, therefore I am_. Bellamy stares at the words for a minute, before looking up at her in surprise, but she’s already walking away.

“Octavia said you’re a nerd,” she explains as she goes, and Bellamy tucks the mug in his bag to take home with him.

He takes it out to put it in the cabinet with all the others—he’s had to relegate the shot glasses to _under the sink_ to make room for them all—but he ends up staring at it for another half hour.

He jumps when Miller walks in. It’s poker night, and he’d completely forgotten, because Clarke gave him a mug with Latin on it.

Actually, she _made_ him a mug, and then painted Latin on it, which somehow makes it worse.

“Neat,” Miller says, nodding at it while he grabs the whiskey from the top of the fridge.

“I think I like Clarke,” Bellamy blurts, but Miller just takes it in stride, like he does everything.

“Cool,” he says, and pours them each a shot. “Who’s Clarke?”

“Octavia’s boss. She makes the mugs,” Bellamy points at one that’s drying on the counter. She’d painted it with a brown and white pattern, like a cow, and it says COWPUCCINO on the bottom. She’d smiled like a kid when he read it, and now every time he sees it he grins like an idiot.

Miller looks between him and the mug, unimpressed. “Are you going to actually _do_ anything about it, or just continue saying nothing, pining after her like an asshole.”

“Continue saying nothing and being an asshole,” Bellamy says with a sigh.

“That’s what I thought,” Miller says, clinking their glasses together. “Cheers.”

Bellamy quickly learns that liking Clarke, and _knowing_ he likes Clarke are entirely different things. She wears baggy tank tops that show off her bright orange and green bras. She still swears five times in every sentence, and uses ridiculous words like _banausic_ when _bland_ works just as well—but instead of being pretentious, it’s just the way she speaks. She always has clay or paint on her face, or both, and her hair is always a mess, and she never asks permission before eating his food, and she never says _thank you_ , either.

It’s a testament to how far gone he is that when she’s stuffing hot dogs and ketchup in her face, all he can think about is how blue her eyes are. He’s twenty-fucking-seven years old, and he’s got sweaty palms because of a _crush_. It’s humiliating, which Miller reminds him of, pretty much daily.

“You _need_ to do something,” he orders over cards one night. It’s the most worked up Bellamy’s ever seen him. “This is getting ridiculous.” He pauses. “Actually, scratch that; it’s _been_ ridiculous. But now it’s affecting poker night, so you need to stop being an idiot, and _do something_.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy agrees. Clarke had worn an actual _dress_ to work that day, and he managed to trip over one of her sculptures, made out of a milk can.

And, because he’s a coward—and because Clarke is his little sister’s _boss_ , and Octavia actually really likes her, and the job, and would probably murder him if he jeopardized that—Bellamy opts to start avoiding Clarke altogether.

It works about as well as expected, because just two days in he has the horrible realization that he _misses_ her. It’s worse than he thought.

“You are literally the most inept person I’ve ever met,” Miller says when Bellamy tells him. He doesn’t even disagree.

“You’re back,” Clarke says when he walks in the next day, and the relief in her voice makes him feel bad all over again. He hadn’t thought she’d actually _notice_ his absence. “Your mugs are on that shelf,” she nods her head towards a group of three painted mugs behind a _not for sale_ sign.

“Thanks,” he says, awkward, folding them into his bag carefully while she watches.

“Did you need something?” she asks. “Octavia isn’t here today.”

“What?” Bellamy has to blink to focus on her words—she’s got paintbrushes holding her hair in place, and she’s wearing overalls with nothing underneath. He glances around. The room’s emptier than he’s ever seen, and there’s no trademark smell of Lincoln baking in the kitchen. “Where is she?”

“It’s her day off,” Clarke says, clearly confused, and Bellamy flushes. He hadn’t even checked the schedule before heading over. “Lincoln’s too.” She studies him for a moment, and he’s suddenly sure she _knows_.

Then, out of nowhere, she says “My asshole best friend wants to meet you.”

Bellamy frowns. “Lincoln’s not your best friend?”

Clarke shakes her head. “He’s more like my step-mom. My asshole best friend refused to go into business with me.”

Bellamy sits down across from her. She’s painting a plate, with what looks like plain coffee. “Why not?”

“She didn’t think people would want to paint pottery while they waited for her to fix their cars.” She pauses, adding the last bit of detail on a buck’s silhouette. “She had a valid point, I guess.”

Bellamy snatches a bite of the half-eaten zucchini bread she’d pushed off to the side. “Still an asshole?” he guesses.

“Still an asshole,” she agrees. “Her name’s Raven.”

“You told her about me?” he grins cheekily—he likes the idea of her telling her friends about him.

Clarke shrugs, very casual. He doesn’t trust it for a second. “She’s jealous—I make her pay for her mugs. Plus, I think she wants to use you to make her coworker jealous so he’ll finally ask her out.”

“What?” Bellamy asks, a little confused. “She hasn’t even met me.”

“She wants to,” Clarke points out. “And I told her you’re hot.”

Bellamy clears his throat, pointedly _not_ thinking about that last part. “My best friend wants to meet you too,” he admits, and Clarke beams at him.

“See?” she says, smug. “You’ve been talking about me, too.”

“Complaining, more like,” he teases. “I told him you eat all my food, and drip paint on my jacket.”

Clarke makes a face and leans forward to swipe her brush along his cheek, and that’s how he ends up inviting Clarke and her asshole friend to poker night.

“You’re letting Clarke come to poker night?” Octavia says with a frown when he tells her. “You _never_ let me come to poker night.”

Bellamy shrugs, awkward, as Miller glares from the couch. “That’s because we’re not supposed to bring _anyone_ to poker night,” Miller grumbles.

“You’re bringing a date too,” Bellamy shoots, even though it’s a weak argument. Miller only invited _some guy from the station IT department, it’s not a big deal_ , because Bellamy invited Clarke and her plus one. He turns back to his sister. “And you have a date, anyway.”

She hasn’t actually _said_ she’s dating Lincoln, but he’s seen the name in all her most recent _crashing at a friend’s_ texts, so it’s not that hard to put together. He’s trying not to get worked up over it. Besides, it’s hard to think of the soft-spoken baker as bad news, even if his thigh is the size of a weight bench.

Octavia just glowers a little before leaving, and Bellamy busies himself by putting different salsas in coffee mugs, because he doesn’t have actual saucers, and trying not to freak out. By the time Clarke barges in without knocking, he’s feeling pretty wired.

He’s also a little drunk, which should feel more dangerous than it does.

Clarke settles into his apartment like it’s her own, which doesn’t really surprise him, and neither does the asshole best friend. She’s gorgeous in her own right, slender and long-limbed, with dark hair and exactly his type. Or would be, if it weren’t for Clarke.

She’s wearing jeans and a Henley, washed clean of clay and paint stains, with no grungy smock in sight. Her hair is tamed for once, in loose curls around her shoulders. She’s wearing makeup.

“Hey,” she smiles, and Miller was right; he’s a goddamned _idiot_.

“Uh,” Bellamy says, staring from the doorway of the kitchen. “You look, uh—this is Miller.” He points at Miller, already sitting at the table and nursing a beer, looking vaguely amused. He tips his drink towards the girls.

“I’m Clarke,” Clarke says. She hits her friend in the shoulder. “This is Raven. She’s an asshole.”

Raven eyes her friend curiously. “Takes one to know one,” she shrugs, and raises a six pack of hard cider. “We brought booze, but not tequila, because we weren’t sure how delicate your livers are.”

Bellamy and Miller snort in tandem, and Bellamy waves the half-empty bottle of whiskey in response.

“Next time,” Clarke promises, and pulls out a chair. “How many people usually come to this thing?”

“Uh,” Bellamy rubs at his neck. He didn’t anticipate how self-conscious he’d feel, having Clarke see where he lives. He’s suddenly very aware of the stack of autobiographies on his coffee table, and the old blanket messily tossed on the couch, and all the worn wooden furniture inherited from his mom. “Just me and Miller.”

Clarke and Raven eye them, confused. “You play poker with two people?” Clarke asks.

Bellamy shrugs. “We change the rules, a little.”

“And we never play with money,” Miller adds.

“What do you bet on?” Raven asks, eyes gleaming. Bellamy eyes her a little warily; he gets the sense she’s probably _very_ good at gambling.

“Anything else, really,” Miller explains. “A week’s worth of paperwork, doing each other’s laundry. I won Blake’s _B. B. King_ LP, one game.”

“Fucking _stole_ , more like,” Bellamy grumbles. He’s still a little bitter about it.

Miller’s date shows up—a shy guy named Monty, who Bellamy recognizes from work—and it turns out Clarke and Raven are friends with his roommate Jasper.  They fill him in on the rules, and then Bellamy fetches everyone a stack of post-it’s to write what they’re willing to put in the pot.

There are a lot of the usual things—a week’s worth of doing the other person’s laundry, or dishes, or cooking them dinner. Raven offers a free check-up on their car, and Monty throws in six months’ worth of spyware, and Adobe Photoshop. Clarke offers up a few different cakes, which he knows Lincoln will end up making, along with a hand-made dish set. Raven wins the first two rounds, as expected, and then Bellamy manages to collect the third through pure luck.

He waits until the girls leave to go through his winnings. They offer Monty a ride home, so he’s gone too, with only a slightly awkward hug from Miller just before.

He finds it at the bottom of the pile, in Clarke’s messy scrawl. _Dinner and a movie!_ Bellamy stares at the note for a minute, before Miller drags himself over to see what it is.

“Cool, you got a date,” he says, and Bellamy frowns.

“I _won_ a date,” he corrects. “In a poker game; I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count.” Miller rolls his eyes and snatches the paper, sticking it to Bellamy’s forehead.

“Congrats, Romeo,” he deadpans, walking out the door.

The pottery place is closed on Sundays, so Bellamy decides to take his car into Raven’s garage for the check-up he won. Really, he just wants to talk about Clarke with someone that actually knows her, and might realize how completely stupid he is about her.

“So you’ve got a major hard-on for Griffin, huh?” Raven says, and Bellamy’s very glad she’s currently ducked under the hood of his car, so she can’t see he’s blushing.

“She _put a date in the pot_ ,” he says, exasperated. “I don’t want to force her to go through with it if she doesn’t want to.” He winces—that sounds whiny, even for him.

Raven straightens so she can give the look of disappointment in him, her full attention. “Clarke doesn’t do anything that she doesn’t want to,” she says. “So if she put dinner and a movie in that stupid pot, she wants to have dinner and a movie with you.” She says something else in Spanish, that sound suspiciously like _you’re an idiot_.

“Don’t listen to Reyes,” says Wick, the other mechanic. Bellamy’s pretty sure he’s the coworker Raven wants to make jealous, but he doesn’t want to ask. Wick grins at Bellamy from across the garage. “She’s just mad _she_ doesn’t get dinner and a movie.”

“And Wick’s just annoyed because he doesn’t have any critical thinking skills,” Raven shoots back without looking up from the engine.

“You wouldn’t know critical thinking if it bit you in the ass!” Wick calls. “ _You did that wrong and you’re an idiot for it_ don’t count!”

“You do everything wrong,” Raven says. “And you’re _always_ an idiot.”

Bellamy shifts uncomfortably in the plastic seat. He’d usually text Octavia or Miller so he didn’t have to listen to their weird flirty arguing, but Octavia’s having brunch with some friends, and Miller’s on a second date with Monty. His third choice would be Clarke, but she chronically forgets to charge her phone, or that she _has_ a phone, so there’s a good chance she won’t respond for two weeks.

Which is why it’s a surprise when his phone rings later that night, and Clarke’s name blinks up at him. He got her number, and Lincoln’s, from O back when the job was new and he still thought they might be serial killers, or at least junkies.

“Clarke?” he asks.

“Oh,” she says, which doesn’t seem like an appropriate response. Then she laughs. It doesn’t make him feel better about this conversation. “Sorry, I thought I was going to have to say who I was,” she pauses. “How _did_ you know who I was?”

“Octavia,” he says, and Clarke makes a noise of understanding. “Is everything okay?”

“That depends,” Clarke says. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

Tomorrow is Monday, which usually means he has work, like any normal person. But SWAT officers work strange hours, since they’re technically on-call for emergencies all the time. He’s been taking the later patrol shifts lately, since they pay more, so he doesn’t have to go in until after sundown. Plus, last week they ended up in a shoot-out while clearing a meth lab, and he got a three-day weekend out of it.

“I don’t work until Tuesday night,” he says. “Why?”

“Want to go to this thing with me?” Clarke asks, and she sounds a little nervous about it, which makes him grin.

“I did win dinner and a movie with you,” he teases.

“Well, go to this thing with me, and then we’ll have dinner and a movie,” she suggests. “It’s like a package deal; three for the price of one.”

He’s pretty sure it’s not a _date_ -date, since most people don’t refer to dates as 3-in-1 package deals, like something on sale at Costco. But it’s still a full day of Clarke, which he’s not about to say no to.

He meets her at the shop, and finds her standing outside with a small wooden wagon filled with the inside of a _Better Homes and Gardens_ spread. She’s holding a muffin that she’s nibbled on a little, and hands it to him without a word.

“Are you having a garage sale?” he asks, staring at the contents of the wagon. It’s old and wooden, and looks ready to fall apart any moment. It’s carrying painted juice pitchers, and glass jars, and some of her metal birds. There are a few coffee paintings, and another made entirely with buttons. It’s all her own work, he’s pretty sure.

“Something like that,” she agrees. “Help me get it in your trunk?”

It doesn’t all fit, but they only have to drive a few blocks so he lets the wagon hang half out the back, and stays under 15 mph. They pull up to a flea market set up right outside the courthouse, and Clarke turns in her seat to face him.

“You don’t actually have to stay,” she says, worrying her lip. She has paintbrushes in her hair again, and her shirt’s inside out but he doesn’t think she’s noticed. There’s a smudge of blue paint above her upper lip, and he’s half in love with her. “I know this isn’t really your thing.”

“Is that why you lured me here under false pretenses?” he teases.

“Hey, I fully intend to deliver on the dinner front,” Clarke says, indignant. “ _And_ the movie. I just really needed someone with a car.”

Bellamy shakes his head, somber. “I feel like a prostitute. You just use me for my Cherokee.”

“Absolutely,” Clarke agrees. “This car is the best thing about you. Also, your hair.” She pauses, and he resists the urge to tug the lip from between her teeth. “So you’ll stay?”

“Obviously,” he scoffs, opening the door. “How else am I going to be objectified by you and all your friends?”

He helps her set up her booth, and she drags him up and down the different makeshift aisles, introducing him to all her artsy friends. He meets Monty’s roommate Jasper, who’s dating a sweet girl named Maya that makes headbands with felt flowers. Clarke buys a few for herself and Octavia, and sells most of her own stuff before the market closes.

Around five, everyone starts packing up, and Bellamy loads the wagon back into his car. Clarke directs him back to her apartment, badly, and she makes him miss the turn the first three times.

“How are you a real person?” he grouses, and Clarke huffs.

“I live in a city,” she argues. “I don’t need a good internal compass; I have ubers.”

Clarke lives in a studio, in a neighborhood somewhere between good and bad. It’s moderately sized, but you wouldn’t know it, because it’s filled wall-to-wall with _things_.

“You _live_ in this?” Bellamy asks, staring at the towers of metal scraps and shoeboxes filled with dyed string and bits of lace and colored beads and melted wax. There are bookshelves made of books, and paintings leaning on the floor because she’d run out of room on the walls. The bathroom is filled with mismatched mirrors and cans of hairspray.

“It helps the charcoal stick,” Clarke explains, but that’s sort of like naming a single tree in a forest.

“Where does Octavia sleep?” he asks, genuinely curious. Her bed is pretty large, standing in the far corner, but he’s actively not looking at it.

“I have a pullout,” Clarke waves a hand to the couch, barely visible under all the clothes and art supplies.

“I feel like I’m in an episode of _Hoarders_ ,” Bellamy teases, and Clarke swats at him with her spoon. She’s making Kraft mac and cheese on the stove, and he can’t help laughing. “ _This_ is the dinner I was promised?”

“I’m a starving artist,” Clarke says, “What do you expect? Go shut up and pick a movie.” She waves the spoon towards a milk crate filled with VHS’s.

“How old are you?” Bellamy asks, flipping through the films. There are a lot of old noirs, and a few French titles he can’t understand. There’s also the original stage version of _Cats_ , which he hasn’t seen since Octavia was seven years old and obsessed with it.

“Mock all you want,” Clarke calls from the kitchen, “But that whole collection was fifteen cents.”

“Probably because they’re archaic,” Bellamy says, secretly delighted. He’s found the 1953 version of _Julius Caesar._

“Your mom’s archaic,” Clarke shoots back.

“Joke’s on you,” Bellamy says, “My mom’s dead.” There’s a pause, in which Bellamy regrets every single moment that has brought him to this one, and Clarke says nothing.

Then, “Cool, so’s my dad. We can start a club, or something.”

Bellamy snorts. “What, the Dead Parents Club?”

“We’ll have a membership fee,” Clarke decides. “Only the best sob stories will do.”

“How high does cancer rank?” he asks, and the whole day has felt a little surreal, but not as much as this conversation.

“Eh, somewhere in the middle,” Clarke muses. “Mine had an aneurism; that’s _way_ sadder. No time to say goodbye.” She comes out, carrying two bowls of mac and cheese, and a bottle of cheap vodka. “ _Viola_ , dinner is served!”

They have to dig her couch out before sitting on it, and Bellamy slides in the tape. Halfway through, they’ve lost interest in the film completely, so Clarke turns the volume down low and they let it play in the background while they pass the vodka back and forth. It starts out as some version of a high school drinking game Bellamy never actually played in high school, but quickly devolves into sharing anecdotes and facts about themselves, whenever they feel like it.

He learns she met Raven when she was a sophomore in high school, and found out they were dating the same guy. He learns she met Lincoln two years later, when she started dating his cousin Lexa, and essentially kept him in the divorce. He learns her childhood best friend is now some sort of Ambassador in Uganda, and sends her baskets of weird frozen fruit every month.

“You have the weirdest social circle,” Bellamy says.

“Like you don’t,” Clarke scoffs, taking a swig.

“I don’t have a social circle.” He pauses. “It’s more like a social square.”

“Who are your four points?” Clarke asks, trying to sit upright. Somewhere in between him detailing the life of Augustus I, and her detailing the rise and fall of her relationship with her mom, her head’s ended up in his lap and his hands are in her hair. He’s sort of braiding some of the strands, but it’s not very coordinated. “Miller,” she counts on her fingers, “Octavia,” she squints, like she’s trying hard to concentrate. “Who else?”

“Uh,” Bellamy blinks. It’s one thing to think of her as one of his four corners, but he’s pretty sure she doesn’t actually consider them friends—why would she? She has her own circle. “Monty,” he admits. “And you.”

Clarke’s face lights up, which he takes to be a good sign. “I made the square!” she crows, delighted. She spills some of the vodka on herself, and her couch, but doesn’t seem to notice.

He wakes up with a sore neck and blinding headache. Clarke’s head is heavy in his lap, and she’s drooling a little on his thigh. Late-morning sunlight is filtering through the wide window, and he nudges her a little until she groans.

She squints up at him, clearly confused. “Bell?” she asks, groggy, voice deep from sleep and alcohol. He tries to discretely move her head down towards his knee.

“I’m thinking really greasy pizza,” he suggests, and Clarke grins.

Between work, and hanging out with Clarke, Bellamy doesn’t actually see much of his sister until the next week.

She slams through the door, and he glances up from the book on the Ottoman Empire Clarke leant him. “Hey, O,” he starts, confused.

“Are you seriously dating my boss?” she demands, and Bellamy blinks at her.

“Uh, I thought you were,” he says, purposefully avoiding the real question. Octavia rolls her eyes dramatically.

“ _Clarke_ ,” she says. “Lincoln said you guys have been on, like, _five_ dates this week!”

Bellamy frowns. After their dinner-and-a-movie fiasco, it became pretty normal to meet her at the store and head home from there. He’s tried to teach her how to cook a few times, but she mostly just watches him and tosses in spices that aren’t part of the recipe. The night before, she went home with him so he could show her the merits of having actual cable, and they made up a drinking game to _Cosmos: A Space Odyssey_.

“Not, like, _date-_ dates,” Bellamy argues, but Octavia looks unconvinced.

“Were you alone together?” she asks.

“Yeah, but—”

“Did you eat a meal together?”

“Box macaroni,” Bellamy scoffs.

“He said you _cooked for her_ ,” she points out.

“Only because she’s incapable of making anything more complex than box macaroni.”

“You fell asleep together, Bell. You _spent the night together_.”

Bellamy frowns, considering. He’d woken up beside Clarke every day this week, and gone to sleep with her every night. Miller flat out refused to come over on poker night, deciding to go out with Monty instead. He’d made a big deal out of it, but at the time Bellamy had thought he just wanted to spend time with his boyfriend.

“I should probably talk to Clarke,” he says, snapping the book shut on his lap.

“Obviously,” Octavia snorts.

Clarke is painting when Bellamy marches into her apartment, not bothering to knock. She never locks the door, even though he’s told her to. He’s even texted her a few times, to make sure, but she only ever sees them three days later.

She jumps and turns around, and he probably should have thought this through, because Clarke only wears her underwear when she paints, and he can’t really focus enough to form words right now.

“Bellamy,” Clarke says, and then, “I’m not wearing any clothes.”

“I can see that,” he mumbles, turning around so she can snatch up the nearest coat she can find. She clears her throat and when he looks, he sees she’s wrapped up in an old fleece blanket, covered in snowmen.

“I’m crazy about you,” he blurts, and then pauses. “I could have done this differently.”

Clarke says nothing, just stares from across the room with wide eyes and paint streaked across her cheek.

“I’d like to take you out on a date,” Bellamy says, fighting the urge to run a nervous hand through his hair. He suddenly remembers he didn’t even change before rushing over, so he’s still in old sweats and a t-shirt, with a pair of Crocs and his reading glasses. The whole thing’s absurd.

“Okay,” Clarke says. “I mean, yes. Um, yes. I’d like that, too.”

“Okay,” Bellamy echoes, giving a business-like nod. “I’ll pick you up from here at seven?” Clarke nods back, and smiles a little.

Bellamy goes home and sleeps in his own bed. He wakes to find _I told you so_ written on the fridge.

He’s completely dressed and ready by five-thirty, and then mills around his apartment for the next forty-five minutes. He calls Miller a few times, until he finally yells at him and hangs up. He calls Octavia, but she’s wisely decided to keep her phone off. He thinks about calling Clarke, listening to her chatter on about Degas and Gregory Blackstock while she tries to smooth her hair, and reach the zipper on her dress.

Bellamy knocks on her door at exactly seven o’clock, and she opens it a second later. She’s gorgeous, which isn’t new, but she’s also dressed like a black-and-white film star, with a long sleek dress that shows more of her skin than Bellamy is altogether prepared to see.

Her hair is curled and pinned up with glass rosebuds, and she’s grinning so brightly it hurts to look at her.

"You look amazing," he breathes, and she smiles, pleased. "I thought you always looked like a homeless person."

"I'm a classy homeless person," Clarke tugs at his suit jacket. They both dressed up, it seems. “So,” she says, “The way I see it—we’ve already had our first date. Several times over.” Her grin turns sly as she tugs him inside. “So I’m pretty sure that means you get to take off this dress and mess up my hair.”

“Oh, thank God,” Bellamy groans, and she’s still grinning as he kisses her.


End file.
